Surprise, Lindsey Graham Only Cares About Obstruction When Bill Clinton's Dong Is Involved

It's been a little more than two decades since a Republican-controlled Congress impeached Bill Clinton for a range of blowjob related felonies, including obstruction of justice. Nothing Clinton did had any impact on national security or the economy. However, we were told that the presidency has high standards and we should hold Bubba to them. That was all bullshit. Most of the Republicans championing Clinton's impeachment and removal in 1998 are now shrugging off Donald Trump's
Godfather cosplay, as documented in the Mueller Report.

Take for instance our home state shame Lindsey Graham. whose soul Trump keeps in a Mason jar on his desk. When Mueller's report was released last week, Graham
declared the case officially closed. NO COLLUSION.

GRAHAM: It's over. It's over, for me. Unless there's something in the report that suggests Mueller did not say there was no collusion or ... if he says, you know, 'I can't decide on obstruction, you decide,' the decision by [Attorney General Bill Barr] is OK with me. If the report indicates no collusion found by Mueller, done, over, for me."

Looks like it's not "over," though, because Barr's lip-synched performance of the Mueller Report mangled quite a few lyrics. Barr skipped right over the verse where Mueller states he can't absolve Trump of wrongdoing (probably because he's the special counsel, not a bought-off priest).

Mueller's report can't indicate "no collusion" because "collusion" isn't a legal term. The report does indicate lots of shady interactions between Trump's campaign and Russia. That's probably worth investigating if we had a co-equal branch of government whose Constitutional duty demanded investigating this sort of thing. Oh, and Mueller also
says the following:

"The conclusion that Congress may apply obstruction laws to the President's corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law."

That is literally "I can't decide on obstruction, you decide." However, Graham, the Senate's ranking Trump sycophant, told
McClatchy yesterday that he's not interested in hearing more from Mueller himself. He's certainly not going to "retry the case" that has not yet been tried.

Graham's "Anything Goes" approach to the executive branch is an obvious contrast to his position when Clinton was in office. Then Graham believed impeachment wasn't about punishing someone who committed an actual crime you could actually prove. It was about "cleansing the office." Does anyone believe the Trump's White House doesn't stink to high hell? There's a Kellyanne Conway roaming free.

Barr grossly
suggested Trump's light obstruction was an understandable result of his "anger and frustration." Trump was worried the Russia investigation would "undermine" his presidency by exposing its illegitimacy. Clinton probably rightly believed that Ken Starr and his blowjob enforcers were needlessly harassing him, but no Republican considered that a valid defense. They didn't even bother to mime playing a tiny violin for him.

Did Trump obstruct justice when he fired James Comey? Did he order his press secretary to knowingly lie? Hell, that was just "Phase One" in a Marvel movie series of obstruction. Trump advanced to "Phase Two" when he feared Mueller was investigating him personally.

"At that point, the president engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts both in public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation," the report states.

Mueller lists ten possible acts of obstruction. Congress better get a move on, since 1998 Graham already said you don't need to wait for the president to utter certain "magic phrases" to prove obstruction.

Graham was one of the lead "prosecutors" of Clinton in the House. When he testified before the Senate, he said there was "no doubt" Clinton's orgasms were somehow "high crimes." But it wasn't just about the sex. It was the lying about the sex. The Republicans cry "no collusion!" while ignoring the standard their party set decades ago that a president lying to avoid embarrassment or to otherwise save his own skin is ultimately an impeachable offense.

GRAHAM: I have lost no sleep worrying about the fact that Bill Clinton might have to be removed from office because of his conduct. I have lost tons of slept thinking he may get away with what he did.

Graham is not a hypocrite so much as he is a partisan hack, whose only core belief is "Republicans Losing Power Bad/Republicans Gaining Power Good." This is probably why who Lindsey Graham sleeps with has never interested us that much. It's how he manages to sleep through the night that continues to baffle us.

Stephen Robinson is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Seattle. However, he's more reliable for food and drink recommendations in Portland, where he spends a lot of time for theatre work. His co-adaptation of "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins is playing NOW at Pioneer Square's Cafe Nordo. All Wonketters welcome.

You guys, hi, hello, it is almost the holiday weekend, so we are going to share you a real video posted last night by "Doctor" Sebastian "Don't Call Me A Nazi" Gorka, that hilarious old knucklecuck. We guess now that he had to give up (or gave up voluntarily!) his Fox News contract, he just makes videos for the Twitter. Hoo ... ray?

Anyway, Gorka is super-excited that Donald Trump issued that order last night, giving Bill Barr all kinds of new powers to expose the Deep State for what it is and PROVE once and for all that the gremlins who live inside Trump's diarrhea are correct when they say Hillary ordered the Deep State to do an illegal witch hunt to Trump, yadda yadda yadda, you've seen these people huff paint before, we don't have to type it all.

Here is the video, after which Wonkette will either transcribe it OR we will provide our own dramatic interpretation. Which one will it be? We don't know! Would you be able to tell the difference between the two? We don't know!

We want to say right here at the outset that we hate Julian Assange. Aside from the sexual assault allegations against him, and aside from the fact that he's just a generally stinky and loathsome person who reportedly smeared poop on the walls at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, while reportedly not taking care of his cat, an innocent creature, he acted as Russia's handmaiden during the 2016 election, in order to further Russia's campaign to steal it for Donald Trump. All signs point to his campaign being a success!

So we are justifiably happy when bad things happen to Julian Assange. We are happy his name is shit the world over, and that any reputation WikiLeaks used to have for being on the side of freedom and transparency has been stuffed down the toilet where it belongs. We are happy he looked like such a sad-ass loser when the Ecuadorian embassy finally kicked him out and he was arrested.

And quite frankly, we were OK with the initial charge against him recently unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia. If you'll remember, he was charged with trying to help Chelsea Manning hack a password into the Defense Department, which is not what journalists do. Journalists do not drive the get-away car for sources. Journalists do not hold their sources' hair back while they're stealing classified intel. Assange is essentially accused of doing all that.

Now, put all that aside. Because -- and this is key -- journalists do publish secrets they are provided by sources. That's First Amendment, chapter and verse, American as fucking apple pie and fast-food-induced diabetes. And that is what much of the superseding indictment of Assange unsealed yesterday was about. (And nope, it wasn't about anything regarding Assange's ratfucking the 2016 election or Hillary's emails. Why would the Trump Justice Department prosecute anything about that? It's all about the older Chelsea Manning stuff, the stuff the Obama Justice Department considered charging Assange with, but ultimately declined, because of that little thing called the First Amendment.)